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Joined 15 days ago
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Cake day: August 20th, 2026

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  • Ok, this is actually just making me depressed at this point.

    You really only see your own autonomy as equivalent with a computer programs?

    Autonomous actually means “having the right of power or self government” which is not true of AI, or “undertaken or carried on without outside control”, which is also not true of AI.

    Power on your computer, load up your fully trained AI, and then wait for it to act without your direction. Did anything happen? No, because a human filled with information and experiences and feelings is actually WAY different than a computer program filled with data.

    For example, I did not prompt you to come on Lemmy and vocally fellate technofascists and their fuckware, you chose to do that of your own volition. That’s autonomy. The computer program won’t do that unless you direct it to.

    Edit - Just to be clear, because you’re not the only one pointing to “agents” as a sign of autonomy/intelligence/sentience -> An agent is literally a computer program that you prompt, which then talks to an LLM, and then does what the LLM tells it to do. It’s not acting autonomously, it’s following directions from the next-word-predictor machine, and those directions are built off of your original prompt.


  • I mostly agree with you, but AI cannot “act autonomously”. You prompt it, and it acts based off of that prompt.

    Think of it like doing the laundry: I load my clothes in and “prompt” the washing machine to do my laundry.

    When the washing machine switches from the rinse cycle to the spin cycle, it’s not acting autonomously, it’s continuing to execute my prompt.

    Is AI capable of doing something you didn’t expect it to do? Yes. Does that mean it’s acting autonomously? No.

    I would also argue that the “power” of LLMs is vastly overstated. A large part of that is for the exact reason you say tho, people with zero knowledge or skill are playing with fire; And when they get burned they blame the machinery, not the operator.